Are you sick of Windows feeling slow and bloated? Are you tired of Microsoft shoehorning their AI assistant nonsense into your desktop? Have you looked at the Steam Deck and wondered why you couldn’t have that on your PC as well?
Linux is the answer to all of those. It’s what the Steam Deck runs, it’s shockingly great for gaming in 2025, and it’s easier to install and use than you think.
You can skip right to how to switch, or you can read on if you want more reasons.
It runs super smooth
Linux is extremely optimized for speed and efficient memory use, because it runs on mobile devices (Android is Linux-based), streaming boxes and smart TVs (Roku is Linux-based), web servers across the world, and much more.
In my experience, most games run at least as well as on Windows, and sometimes even more smoothly with faster and more consistent frame rates - see this Tom’s Hardware benchmark post.
It’s more user friendly than you think
Unlike on Windows where there’s just one desktop environment, there are multiple options on Linux, but for the purposes of gaming, KDE Plasma is not only the most popular and instantly familiar if you’re switching from Windows, it’s also what’s used on the Steam Deck if you switch to desktop mode.
From the KDE 6 megarelease announcement; link contains videos of it in action.
Most games run well on it
In a lot of cases, it requires no effort on your part, because Valve, the people behind the Wine project, and many others have been putting in a ton of work over the last decade to make that happen - Proton, the same compatibility layer used on the Steam Deck, is also used by Steam on desktop Linux to make Windows games run on Linux.
Your favourite software often already works on it
Steam, Discord, OBS, and many others have Linux versions. Many other things are web-based, which means they work cross-platform; for example, the web-based version of Photoshop works great on Linux. For software that doesn’t have a Linux version, I highly recommend Bottles which can run Windows software through a user-friendly interface.
It’s private and secure by default
Linux is developed in the open, contributed to by big companies and individual hobbyists, built from the ground up for security and performance, and doesn’t care about your data except to ensure that it stays in your hands.
It’s not just for nerds
Content creators, artists, gamers, and many other people you might not expect all run Linux on our computers.
Other success stories
Microsoft is worse than you think
I know most people don’t like getting preached at, so I’ve left this for the end, but yeah, Microsoft is terrible and you deserve better.